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“You need to take on a role or
function, become a subject
matter expert in it and then you
need to ensure you can pass that
on to your team."
always rational”, Gibson says. "It's very difficult for AI
technologies to capture the irrational part of the mar-
ket and, arguably, humans are better placed to do that."
While technology may be able to bring some level of
clarity and optimisation to trading processes, much
of this development is being driven by changes in the
regulatory environment. MiFID II has had around 18
months to bed into the European markets but remains
the key factor for determining market complexity, buy-
side strategies and technology implementation.
Gibson highlights how regulation is impacting on
how the firm approaches its use of technology and
the implementation of new solutions, particularly
challenging when compliance itself is not static, or as
she puts it, “a living, breathing piece of regulation.”
One example is changes around trade and transaction
reporting, where even minor alterations to data fields
can open up significant compliance concerns.
“Those pieces of regulation mean that the burden
of regression testing on any changes you have made
has gone up, which in turn means that the costs of
on-boarding and the risks go up,” she says. “Those are
the challenges that we are facing,
but that is an industry-wide chal-
lenge.”
Like most other heads of trading
desks throughout Europe, Gibson
says MiFID III is “just a matter
of time” and that so far, at least,
MiFID II has only been able to
achieve its objective of increased
transparency to “a very small
extent compared to what could
have happened and ESMA is aware
of that.”
Ultimately, regulatory change is a
fact of life for asset managers and,
in conjunction with their trading
objectives, this is where the sub-
ject matter expertise Gibson prizes
at RLAM comes to the fore. It’s a
role that she has aimed to take on
herself throughout her career, in-
forming what Gibson describes as
the biggest lesson she has learned
from her career to date – to always
aim to make yourself dispensable.
“You need to take on a role or
function, become a subject matter
expert in it and then you need to
ensure you can pass that on to
your team, to make sure that the
workflow and process is in place,
and then you can move on to the
next thing,” she explains.
“That’s better for your team
because they are continuing to
increase their ability and knowl-
edge. It’s better for the company
because they don’t have key man
risk. It does sound counter-intui-
tive, but I genuinely believe that it
works for the team, company and
individual.”
Issue 60 // TheTradeNews.com // 47